What does "Import saved configuration" do exactly?

[Aqua1ung]

See title. More precisely, say I got a flatpak app that is already installed:

1. Say "List of installed Flatpak apps" is on and "User data of installed Flatpak apps" is off when creating the archive, does the already installed flatpak app get overwritten and its data does not?
2. How about if "List of installed Flatpak apps" is off and "User data of installed Flatpak apps" on? What gets overwritten? Only the app's data gets overwritten?

Please clarify. Many thanks!

[vikdevelop]

See title. More precisely, say I got a flatpak app that is already installed:

1. Say "List of installed Flatpak apps" is on and "User data of installed Flatpak apps" is off when creating the archive, does the already installed flatpak app get overwritten and its data does not?
2. How about if "List of installed Flatpak apps" is off and "User data of installed Flatpak apps" on? What gets overwritten? Only the app's data gets overwritten?

Please clarify. Many thanks!

Hello,
thank you for your question.
Items of the type "Save Flatpak application list" in the "Items to be included in the archive" dialog on the Save page only affect saving the configuration, not importing it.
When importing a configuration, only what is inside the archive is imported, i.e., if you have Flatpak application data in it, it will be imported, otherwise it will not.

[Aqua1ung]

Let me rephrase my question:

1. Assuming that I build an archive with "List of installed Flatpak apps" on, will the already existing apps that are on the list be re-installed upon import? And will the already installed apps that are not on the list be deleted?
2. Assuming that I build an archive with (a) "List of installed Flatpak apps" off and (b) "User data of installed Flatpak apps" on , what user data gets restored upon import? Will importing the archive restore the app data for apps that are not installed? Will the existing data for apps that are installed be overwritten?

[vikdevelop]

The configuration import works in the following steps:

1. Select the archive or folder
2. Save Desktop verifies whether the archive is encrypted or not. If so, a password is required for verification.
3. The configuration import process itself starts, during which only icons, themes, dconf, extensions, etc. are imported. Flatpak applications and their data are not imported yet.
4. After the import is complete and you log back into the system, the import of Flatpak application data (everything in the app directory in the configuration archive) will begin, followed by the installation of the applications themselves, during which the list from the archive is compared with the applications currently installed on the system. If a particular application is in the list from the archive but is missing from the system, it will be installed. Nothing is uninstalled. I hope I have explained this clearly. If you are still unclear about anything, you can take a look at this Python script, which is responsible for this functionality :)